What do you think?
Rate this book
Texas A&M University Anthropology Series
Human Origins: What Bones and Genomes Tell Us about Ourselves
Ever since the recognition of the Neanderthals as an archaic human in the mid-nineteenth century, the fossilized bones of extinct humans have been used by paleoanthropologists to explore human origins. These bones told the story of how the earliest humans—bipedal apes, actually—first emerged in Africa some 6 to 7 million years ago. Starting about 2 million years ago, the bones revealed, as humans became anatomically and behaviorally more modern, they swept out of Africa in waves into Asia, Europe and finally the New World.
Even as paleoanthropologists continued to make important discoveries—Mary Leakey’s Nutcracker Man in 1959, Don Johanson’s Lucy in 1974, and most recently Martin Pickford’s Millennium Man, to name just a few—experts in genetics were looking at the human species from a very different angle. In 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick first saw the double helix structure of DNA, the basic building block of all life. In the 1970s it was shown that humans share 98.7% of their genes with the great apes—that in fact genetically we are more closely related to chimpanzees than chimpanzees are to gorillas. And most recently the entire human genome has been mapped—we now know where each of the genes on the chromosomes that make up DNA is located on the double helix.
In Human Origins : What Bones and Genomes Tell Us about Ourselves , two of the world’s foremost scientists, geneticist Rob DeSalle and paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall, show how research into the human genome confirms what fossil bones have told us about human origins. This unprecedented integration of the fossil and genomic records provides the most complete understanding possible of humanity’s place in nature, its emergence from the rest of the living world, and the evolutionary processes that have molded human populations to be what they are today.
Human Origins serves as a companion volume to the American Museum of Natural History’s new permanent exhibit, as well as standing alone as an accessible overview of recent insights into what it means to be human.
Even as paleoanthropologists continued to make important discoveries—Mary Leakey’s Nutcracker Man in 1959, Don Johanson’s Lucy in 1974, and most recently Martin Pickford’s Millennium Man, to name just a few—experts in genetics were looking at the human species from a very different angle. In 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick first saw the double helix structure of DNA, the basic building block of all life. In the 1970s it was shown that humans share 98.7% of their genes with the great apes—that in fact genetically we are more closely related to chimpanzees than chimpanzees are to gorillas. And most recently the entire human genome has been mapped—we now know where each of the genes on the chromosomes that make up DNA is located on the double helix.
In Human Origins : What Bones and Genomes Tell Us about Ourselves , two of the world’s foremost scientists, geneticist Rob DeSalle and paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall, show how research into the human genome confirms what fossil bones have told us about human origins. This unprecedented integration of the fossil and genomic records provides the most complete understanding possible of humanity’s place in nature, its emergence from the rest of the living world, and the evolutionary processes that have molded human populations to be what they are today.
Human Origins serves as a companion volume to the American Museum of Natural History’s new permanent exhibit, as well as standing alone as an accessible overview of recent insights into what it means to be human.
- GenresScience
216 pages, Hardcover
Published March 18, 2008
2 people are currently reading
42 people want to read
About the author
Rob DeSalle
36 books17 followersRob DeSalle is curator of entomology in the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City. He is author or coauthor of dozens of books, several based upon exhibitions at the AMNH, including The Brain: Big Bangs, Behaviors, and Beliefs and A Natural History of Wine, coauthored with Ian Tattersall and published by Yale University Press. He lives in New York City.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 14, 2023
While the field of bio anthropology has advanced quite a bit since the complete ion of this book, it is still an excellent visual of the dawn of humanity and hominid evolution. It’s expertly written so that it is appealing all the way through whether or not you’re studying a field of science. Easy for beginners to understand, but crammed full of amazing information useful to anyone. Definitely gonna be in my recommend pile!
June 20, 2019
Eminently readable and informative. Not too technical, but still up to date (date written). Figure number references in the text of the last few chapters are totally bananas, and bear only passing resemblance to the figures intended. One even directs the reader to a figure that doesn't exist. I would still recommend this book as a useful introduction to the science behind the reconstruction of evolutionary history of humans.
May 22, 2015
Human Origins is an informative and engaging introduction to the constantly changing study of human origins and genetics, early migration theories and our enigmatic brains. Particularly captivating are the modern techniques for extracting clues from DNA, which were impossible and unheard of several decades ago.
I wasn't able to appreciate thoroughly the chapter focusing on nucleotides, having insufficient basic knowledge of the subject to fully grasp the concepts as laid out here, but that is a deficiency on my part rather than the author. The book suffers from some terribly pixelated graphics which, while they come across as somewhat unprofessional, do not necessarily detract from the content. All in all, a fascinating peek into who we are.
I wasn't able to appreciate thoroughly the chapter focusing on nucleotides, having insufficient basic knowledge of the subject to fully grasp the concepts as laid out here, but that is a deficiency on my part rather than the author. The book suffers from some terribly pixelated graphics which, while they come across as somewhat unprofessional, do not necessarily detract from the content. All in all, a fascinating peek into who we are.
July 27, 2009
Fascinating so far!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews